Charlie Rose

SharkswithfrikingLazers  02/25/2011 05:09 PM Report

CHARLIE ROSE: This is not a zero-sum game.

BILL GATES: Absolutely.

NOT TRUE! Oil is the limiting factor. Every penny that gasoline increases in America is like a $1.5 billion tax. So gas goes up a dollar and it is like taxing America $150 billion. The effect is greater in the South where there is more driving and lower incomes.

Please quit saying: this is not a zero sum game. When China needs no oil then it is a zero sum game. (For the sake of the environment I hope they find something else besides oil and coal.)

SharkswithfrikingLazers  02/25/2011 05:00 PM Report

Great Interview! Bill Gates is very well read and articulate and a great guest (besides being obscenely rich in a capitalist system).

In a previous interview Bill said The Gates Foundation has learned that two questions can predict how much kids learn: "Does your teacher use class time well?" and, "When you're confused, does your teacher help you get straightened out?".

Bill, so does this panoramic camera measure these two? If so, what kind of scale do you use?

TEACHER PAY: 'We don’t have many things in society where you go up and you ask somebody to mow your lawn and when it comes time to pay them you say "How long have you been mowing lawns? Oh, I’d like to pay you double because you’ve been mowing lawns a long time." Today baseball players are better than they were 30 years ago. Are teachers better?'

Bill, I interviewed for a job at Microsoft and your folks asked me how much experience I had. So yes we do reward experience. By the way, lawn mowing and baseball--not in the same ballpark as Teachers.

BUDGET CUTS: How many teachers are you willing to fire in order to have 78-year-olds have a procedure which will be invented five years from now that adds four months to their life?

Bill, the demographics say the the elders will have the voting block so you have to appeal to their sense of patriotism. Perhaps a end of life contract with a cost/benefit analysis will help them with this.

winter  02/21/2011 05:23 PM Report

Amazing,people can find a way to criticize even what the Gates are trying to do.

dcauble  02/14/2011 07:06 AM Report

It is amazing that community colleges aren't falling apart. If his foundation would divide up a billion dollars to community colleges in the country it would equal $868,000 each. That would go a long way at in the foundations of these colleges that do so much with so little.

JohnGelles  02/10/2011 04:34 PM Report

Mubarak and the Egyptian Army are asked to quit in favor of an unknown future for themselves and their fortunes. America does not offer to protect Egypt, its Army or its citizens from poverty or civil war. America does not offer to protect its own working or middle classes from the mess we're in.

Why do we fail? We have the power of our explosives and our industrial potential. But we have no doctrine to support such radical notions.

So we may expect chance events to determine the next phase of Arab politics. Let us hope there is no civil war. With luck we soon will see a new military dictator with the job of putting change off until more nations are ready to solve economic problems with full employment than we see anywhere today.

JohnGelles  02/10/2011 03:46 PM Report

Gates is a real help to those who envy his wealth. He talks his mind and does his best to spend money in favor of improving the lot of humanity -- as best he can.

We, who might otherwise might die of envy, experience his frustrations and struggles. We discover that Gates' gifts were not enough make him immune to our own frustrations. If we have enough money and brain, we quickly conclude that untold wealth does not usually confer untold power to bring common sense to voters and politicians. It does not even give us confidence that great wealth can reduce corruption and stupidity at the apex of influence in a democracy as we know it.

Yet, if Gates were to try to solve our problems in democratic political economy, to, say, protect human rights first and foremost, instead of spending on lesser problems like vaccines that will come without him, then he would talk turkey on the Second Bill of Rights -- the way FDR did on 11 January 1944.

Jopa09  02/10/2011 03:16 PM Report

I don't really understand why Bill Gates does not take really good care of himself, he looks overweight, too nervous and too agitated. With all his money he could really look like a model of health and harmony.

Perhaps he does not care and does not understand, that the harmony starts with himself and the harmony is the only solution in this ugly World.

TedPoulos  02/10/2011 12:02 PM Report

It is useful to know that he best answers to the toughest challenges (personal, local and global) are found when you have the courage and curiosity to identify, understand and apply the underlying law of nature, which was discovered in 2003.

Albert Einstein was correct when he said, "I believe that in order to make real progress one must again ferret out some general principle of nature."

A healthy curiosity is as useful as ever.

doodah  02/10/2011 10:31 AM Report

He's absolutely right about what he says about teachers and teaching. If they aren't good at it, they need to be open to being better trained or find another job. The teacher unions are All about dumbing down the most important profession by promoting mediocrity AT BEST. Which Aint Good Enough, if the species is to survive.

doodah  02/10/2011 10:09 AM Report

Did I hear Bill Gates say, "the healthier dirt-poor people are, the less children they have."?. ..Yes I did. I wonder who told him that.

Well, at least he feels good about himself. I'm sure he's a Big-Tipper when he does.

When I win the Lotto, I'm going to turn into a 'SuperLiberal' too (I'll finally be Rich Enough to throw it around $$:)(and it'll be funner than letting the government piss on it)

JohnGelles  02/10/2011 06:51 AM Report

Do Rose and Gates offer WISDOM -- relative to the future of democracy and human rights (here and everywhere) -- as Gates saves current lives and Rose interviews famous people?

In the transcript we find:

BILL GATES: ... in the case of Egypt did we say, well, is their system really good? Is it operating to provide actual jobs to [the Egyptian people], or is it rather creating some sense of, hey, I don’t have a job. How should I feel about my regime? How should I feel about the bank-roller of my regime?

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Well that's a piece of wisdom about Egypt and America.

Americans without a job cannot feel positive about the regimes we've had (After Nixon) that refused to win the war against no-job, no-money in my pocket, and avoidable poverty, that Rose and Gates ignore with a flippant sentence about "this ain't a zero-sum game world that we're born into".

The money we spent on Rose's heart (and mine too -- for my quintuple bypass) was well spent. I went to pay for doctors and others that constitute earth's progress in health and medicine. These health providers spent what they received for other products that employed people on earth who need the work.

In other words, until there is ZERO UNEMPLOYMENT all spending helps more than it hurts. After that, we will need to spend more wisely, so that things get better every year and even day.

Rose is rarely right inside his head. But he does interview famous people, and some of them appreciate the need for gigantic spending in the public interest by governments and ordinary people.

Other comment here, so far, is fixated on debt and being the first to post on all interviews. It is unwise stuff.

Rose falls short of his own remark: We live to play a NON-ZERO SUM GAME. But Rose never takes that thought to its Keynesian conclusion. If we would have game provide the jobs we need in Egypt and America we have to interview people like those who teach full employment systems at the University of Missouri Kansas City Center for Full Employment and Price Stability. As Gates said, America has great universities: too bad Rose interviews the wrong ones experts.

charlizecourriers  02/09/2011 05:07 PM Report

Rose is deaf to any real and critical comment on the Health Care Bill of the Democratic Congress of last year. Gates has a measure of intellectual honesty. That legislation is no answer to our health care problems! And as any honest person will admit,the legislation that we got is NOT funded-or to put it another way, it is a huge scam from an accounting standpoint. Rose simply can't admit the truth, and Gates is too polite to engage Rose's fantasy. There is of course an additional psychoanalytic reason for Rose's willful blindness, which Gates tangentially hinted at--how much did Rose's surgeries cost? If keeping Grandma alive for "four more months" is problemantic from Gates perspective, then what about the costs of multilple heart interventions for someone like Rose? Rose seemed clearly uninterested in this ethical dilemna! From other topics covered in this interview and the host's past remarks, it's obvious Rose and Gates belong to the School of More which unfortunately lacks a Graduate School that teaches its undergraduates How To Pay Our Debts.

REMant  02/09/2011 02:37 PM Report

I'm all for eradicating diseases, and it may reduce population eventually, but in general population problems are multiplied by charity if it is not sustainable, on the one hand, and, on the other, the shift of money to the developed world that helps impoverish the undeveloped and further the spread of disease. This is the real progressive paradox. Does philanthropy really do any good? Some like Hume would argue that the rich are necessary for accumulating savings, and Keynesian types would argue that without the forced "saving" of bank credit and deficit spending, there would be no improvement or development, no cities and highways, etc, but we could also say there would be, for instance, no Versailles, no Chartres, and no French revolution. It is not an argument for primitivism, but only against intervention, and a faith in natural processes. A good case could be made - I think has been made - that development of this sort in Africa is what has led to the neglect of public health practices like sanitation, and the much of the problem with disease.

Regarding education problems, I think mostly you have to find good teachers and make them principals and school board members and then let them have the power to hire and fire. There is no reason, if there ever was, for talking about tenure and academic freedom in elementary and secondary schools. But a lot of formal education in this country is unnecessary and wrong-headed, aimed at status instead of learning. The reason why we have "such huge costs" in education and medical care is similar to the mechanics of charity. It has far less to do with practice, then it has with the credit creation process, pricing people out of the market for services, which then become increasing directed to the wealthy, many of whom not surprisingly anymore happen to be elderly. The relative difference in wealth makes a difference not only in the cost of services, but in commodity and real estate speculation, and the attitude of the public. It diminishes the middle class and its strengths of entrepreneurship and political independence. And it takes from the young. To the extent it also robs those abroad, who rely on the dollar and our markets, it helps buoy up the "establishment" and becomes a reason for its existence. Thus the budget for weapons grows and that for peace shrinks. It is all very much like mid-18th century France.

To blame everything on physical practices and ignore money is all very Keynesian. The price of things depends on money and supply, but ultimately only on money, because demand would adjust to supply were it not for printing more. To demand something without the means to supply it does no one any good, but being able to supply something of value will surely stimulate demand for it. Given what he has said, I think Mr Gates could, if he put his mind to it, understand perfectly well whether the economy is going to get better under this regime or not. It appears he already thinks it will not.

But Charlie these days keeps trying to lead guests when they get on this subject. Here Gates had been arguing for austerity, but he will have none of it, hurrying him along and then shifting the subject to a defense of the president. He has been pushing the green card business for a long while now, and it is and always has been a case of beggar thy neighbor. But it won't wash anyway, because we don't have the wherewithal anymore to attract them here, and they clearly haven't prevented that from occurring by being here. Those who have been here are going back to their home countries, where in fact they will do more good.